Baby foodie

I’m reading Ruth Reichl’s fantastic book, “Comfort me with Apples.” It’s the second part of her memoir, after the best-selling and also page-turning “Tender at the Bone.” This one details her transformation from right-on Berkeley foodie into a nationally-known restaurant critic. Reichl, in case you don’t already know, is these days the editor in chief of Gourmet Magazine. She writes in an engaging and lively style. And I am riveted.

The foie gras was molten velvet in my mouth, and when I took a sip of wine the flavor became even more intense, richer and rounder than it already was. Coleman looked at me, and I felt the thrill all the way down to my fingertips. I understood, for the first time ever, why those turn of the century restaurants had private rooms with velvet couches. I would  have liked a couch.

The scrambled eggs with truffles were even better than the foie gras. Minutes earlier I would not have thought it possible. each forkful was like biting off a piece of the sun. It was like musk and light, all at once, and suddenly I burst out, “This is what I always imagined sex would taste like.”

I like to read this sort of passage after I’ve gotten the kids down for the night and I’m tucking into my bowl of Cheerios, which are brilliantly set off by the cherry notes in my glass of two-buck-Chuck (merlot, 2007). Can you say Living Vicariously? Go on and try.

I had fois gras once. I think. Isn’t it like pate?

That’s the best part of this kind of book. As much as I love to wallow in another woman’s affairs and career-trajectory, I most enjoy confirming my suspicion that I am an infant in the world of food.

I know the surface. The stuff I’m supposed to know. The details you can pick up in any food magazine.  I know what three Michelin stars mean for a restaurant…but I’ve never been to one.  I know that black truffles are something to exclaim over. But I’ve never tasted one. My two meals in Paris consisted of an ice cream (which I bought from a street vendor, who then screamed at me in French when I found I didn’t have quite enough money and tried to indicate that I would get more from my stepfather, just inside the cafe. I was 11.) And a candy bar I bought at a vending machine during a 4-hour layover in the Gard du Nord. I don’t know the first thing about what wines pair with which flavor or exactly what a sauce bearnaise entails. I only know that there’s a whole world of sublime eating out there and I can’t even pronounce the name of the ingredients.

It keeps me humble whenever I start to crow about how good my lentil soup turned out last night.

Truth be told, I don’t know if I’ll ever scramble to this level of eating, much less cooking. I am made so happy by such simple tastes. Of course, if I can make a tortilla Espanola then there’s really no reason why I couldn’t make a passable pissaladiere nicoise, right?

But first I have to figure out what one is. And then I’d have to learn how to dice an onion properly, no?

Tagged as: Foodie, Ruth Reichl